“Every day I feel is a blessing from God. And I consider it a new beginning. Yeah, everything is beautiful.”
Prince
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The sun has not caught me in bed in fifty years.
About this quote
Meaning
Jefferson is making a pointed remark about his lifelong habit of rising before sunrise. The statement is not simply a boast about discipline. It reflects a genuine conviction, common among thinkers of his era, that early rising is a form of self-mastery and that the hours before dawn are uniquely valuable for reflection and work. Being caught still in bed by the sun would represent, in his view, a kind of surrender to laziness that he found incompatible with a life well lived.
Context
This line appears in a letter Jefferson wrote in 1825, near the very end of his life, to a young man named Thomas Jefferson Smith. The letter is a collection of practical and moral advice, a set of personal rules Jefferson felt had served him well and that he hoped might guide the young man. In that context, the remark about never sleeping past sunrise is not a casual comment but a deliberate piece of counsel, offered as one of the habits he believed contributed most to a productive and virtuous life.
About the author
Thomas Jefferson was an American statesman, writer, and thinker who served as the third President of the United States and was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence. Beyond his political career he had wide-ranging intellectual interests that included architecture, science, agriculture, and philosophy. His correspondence was vast and often deeply personal, and the letters he wrote in his later years are considered among the most revealing records of his character and beliefs.
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